{"id":15655,"date":"2014-11-10T10:52:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T17:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=15655"},"modified":"2014-11-10T14:20:57","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T21:20:57","slug":"disaster-put-back-to-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=15655","title":{"rendered":"Disaster Put Back to Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but:<\/p>\n

\"arai-signet-q-helmet-liner\"For my birthday, our\u00a0son gave\u00a0me a stereo helmet headset. It\u00a0looked like it’d be super-easy to install, so I pulled the cheek pads out of the\u00a0expensive Arai helmet … the one helmet that fits me perfectly\u00a0…\u00a0and put them in. The padding on the earpieces was too thick, though, and when I put the helmet on they pressed into my ears in a very uncomfortable way. I took the helmet apart again and cut the padding off the earpieces, but they still hurt\u00a0my ears. The Arai’s snug-but-perfect fit doesn’t leave room for earpieces, so I decided to put the headset in my second-best Nolan.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t done with the Arai, though. For some reason the cheek pads wouldn’t\u00a0snap back in place, no matter what I tried. I worked on that helmet for more than an hour, and finally gave up in frustration. There’s a place in town that installs audio and Bluetooth communications in motorcycle helmets, and I resigned myself to taking the\u00a0messed up Arai there\u00a0and paying to have it put back together correctly.<\/p>\n

Next\u00a0I tried to tackle the Nolan.\u00a0When I popped\u00a0the cheek pads out I was relieved to see recessed areas in the helmet’s inner lining, perfectly sized\u00a0for the earpieces. No matter what I did, though, the earpieces wouldn’t stay in the recesses\u00a0once\u00a0the cheek pads were back in. Out came the headset. This time, at least, I was able to reassemble the inner padding of the helmet.<\/p>\n

Well, crap, I told myself, I can’t do anything right. Which brings me to the set of rear speakers I bought\u00a0to\u00a0install on the\u00a0Goldwing (while my son was birthday shopping on Amazon, so was I). The Goldwing came new with front speakers, but the\u00a0speaker pods behind the passenger pillion were empty: rear speakers were\u00a0optional equipment.<\/p>\n

After the disaster with the helmets, I was afraid to mess with\u00a0the speakers on my own, since a lot of plastic pieces inside the trunk had to be removed first, so I called my friend and motorcycle maintenance guru Ed to ask\u00a0if we could make a play date in his garage. Sure, he said, come on over. As an afterthought, almost, I decided to bring the helmets and headset along.<\/p>\n

Ed and I installed the speakers and they work perfectly. There were only two screws left over, and wherever the hell they were supposed to go, their presence doesn’t seem to be critical. After we put\u00a0the speakers in\u00a0Ed\u00a0figured out how to secure the earpieces in the Nolan helmet (two-sided tape, the one thing I didn’t have at home), and once I put the cheekpads and headliner back in my second-best helmet was wired for sound. It works great too.<\/p>\n

Then, on my own, I took one last\u00a0stab at putting the Arai back together, and with the better light in Ed’s garage saw how the earpieces were meant to snap into place, so now the Arai is\u00a0good as new.\u00a0Disaster has been put back to rights, and all is well with the world.<\/p>\n

We’re all different, of course, but\u00a0maybe you share with me feelings of depression and restlessness when\u00a0things are broken,\u00a0or even not quite right … especially when you’re the one who screwed things up. Is this what comedian Jerry Seinfeld meant the other day when he said he thinks he’s somewhere on the autism spectrum<\/a>? I’ve never thought about that before, but maybe I am a bit autistic. That would explain a lot! Just ask my wife!<\/p>\n

At least I fixed my shit for now, and things are looking up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but: For my birthday, our\u00a0son gave\u00a0me a stereo helmet headset. It\u00a0looked like it’d be super-easy to install, so I pulled the cheek pads out of the\u00a0expensive Arai helmet … the one helmet that fits me perfectly\u00a0…\u00a0and put them in. The padding on the earpieces was too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,5,2],"tags":[1707],"class_list":["post-15655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-motorcycling","category-personal","tag-helmet-headset"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15655"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15661,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15655\/revisions\/15661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}